Episode Details

A dying father bids his three sons sleep in turn at his grave, and only Ivan the Fool keeps the watch — three nights running, for his lazy brothers as well as for himself — until the grave opens and the old man whistles up the magic horse: "Sivko-Burko, prophetic Voronko!", who comes with the earth trembling, sparks from his eyes and smoke in a column from his nostrils, and serves the fool who alone obeyed. Crawling into one ear fed and out of the other dressed as a fine fellow no one knows, Ivan rides three times at the tsar's challenge, misses the princess's portrait by three logs, then by two, then tears it and her kerchief clean away — and is found out at the tsar's own ball, soot-covered behind the stove chimney, when he wipes his mouth with that kerchief. This episode reads all three of Afanasyev's tellings of Sivko-Burko whole: the Ivan the Fool telling of the portrait and the kerchief; the telling of Vanyusha, who reads at the grave while his brothers curry their horses, and kisses Elena the Beautiful in her temple of twelve pillars and twelve crowns at a single flying leap; and the shortest telling, in which the fool catches the golden-and-silver horse at the grave with his own hands and is betrayed, happily, by the princess's ring on his finger at the king's inspection.

The tale «Сивко-бурко» (№№ 179–181) — from the collection of Alexander Afanasyev, in new English translations made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.

Afanasyev.

Intermission: "2-23" — instrumental.

KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.